Organizers of a campaign for a supervised injection site at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre are hopeful their proposal will become a reality soon even as canvassers encountered some opposition while promoting the idea in the neighbourhood on Saturday afternoon.
Bill Muirhead who described himself as a "pensioner," said he has found needles on his lawn in Sandy Hill but is philosophically opposed to the idea of a publicly-funded supervised injection site.
"I'm not totally in favour of this," he told canvassers on Saturday afternoon. "Those drugs are illegal to start with and I don't think we want to sort of encourage people to do this and go in that direction. And, of course, these places are all funded — publicly funded. Somebody has to pay for them."
He added that he was concerned making it easier to use injection drugs might encourage more people to use them.
But canvasser Karim Alameddine explained that showing compassion to people who have addictions and feel marginalized might actually have the opposite effect.
With support from health workers, people who use drugs can decrease their doses in the ultimate goal of quitting altogether, if they choose, canvasser Chris Dalton said.
"They did find, as well, in Vancouver, that there actually was cost savings," Dalton said, as he handed Muirhead pamphlets with more information.
"When you factor in medication for HIV, for Hepatitis C, for hospital visits, for policing — that actually when you look at the larger costs to society of drug use, especially drug use among the homeless population, that those are actually more expensive than just creating a site to reduce these things," Dalton added.
